Men in Paradise - 12. Chapter 12 - The Farming

To clarify the historical origins of agriculture, scholars have established a range of theories. A history period of intensification and growing sedentism is suggested by studies of the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. Current models suggest that wild stands that had previously been harvested began to be cultivated, but were not domesticated immediately. The preferred reason for the roots of agriculture is localised climate change. Much of the planet became subject to long dry seasons after global climate change took place after the last ice age. These conditions favored annual plants that died off, leaving a dormant seed or tuber in the long dry season. At this time, an abundance of readily stored wild grains and pulses allowed hunter-gatherers to establish the first settled settlements in some areas. At the end of the Paleolithic, after 10,000 BC, farming began in the predynastic period. Grains such as wheat and barley, alongside commercial crops such as flax and papyrus, were the staple food crops. Wheat, barley and jujube were domesticated in India by 9,000 BC. As independent centers of origin of agriculture, at least eleven different regions of the Old and New World were involved. Wild grains from at least 105,000 years ago have been gathered and consumed. Domestication did not occur, however, until much later. In the Levant, wheat and barley were cultivated from about 9500 BC. By 6200 BC, rice was domesticated in China. The Bronze Age, from c. 3300 BC, witnessed the intensification of agriculture in civilizations such as Mesopotamian Sumer, ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Indian subcontinent, ancient China, and ancient Greece.

Justin Pierre's PoV

Phew, what a night it was...

I did it with Afridi whom I consider as my buddy. But then, when I thought about it, It was a different experience with a guy which I never tried before. I could still feel the pulsating of his dick in my hand. I never felt that before, I even heard his heartbeats. He was so tensed, so unsure, so fragile.

Did I use him out of sexual frustration like the way they do it in prison? Or was I exploring sex which I never had the opportunity back home? Or was it like playing a new video game?

But I was sure about that sex, it wasn't gross at all. I would not have done it with another guy if not Afridi. I was getting used to liking him in more ways than I thought. And also, I was a guy who believes in nature and openness. I had no inhibitions. When you masturbate, you do not feel your hand, you feel your dick. It's not about how you get the pleasure, it's about whether you enjoy it. So whatever that came on my way, I took it.

No regrets, no excuses, no strings, and no disappointments.

Tree branches were banging each other. Uncharacteristically, the heavy wind was blowing from the North and the sun was shining bright at the same time. The Climate was good, so I decided to make use of it.

It was farming day. And it was going to be the traditional cultivation of crops.

Afridi was still sleeping peacefully. His braided hair falling over his thick eyelids. His perfect middle eastern jaw covered by a newly sprouted beard proudly proclaiming his adolescence. His skin without any blemishes or flaws were glowing in the daylight. True, the boy could have easily been featured on a cover of a Teen magazine and won millions of hearts. I could hear his rhythmic breathing in deep sleep. His arms were still around me. I touched his shoulders slightly to wake him up.

Afridi opened his eyelids and looked at me with a lazy smile.

"Man, we are farming today," I told him, I couldn't hide my excitement.

"Huh," he rolled his eyes and tried to fake sleep again covering the blanket over him.

I punched his shoulder lightly. And forcibly removed the blanket. That did the magic.

"Please, let me sleep a few more minutes" He was pleading with me with his pouty face.

"It's sunshine already, we need to keep the field ready, wake up,

"I told him that time with a stern voice.

He understood I was serious. He woke up lazily.

"Come on dude, we got a lot of work to do" I hurried him.

He got up from the floor. The loft had been comfortable, unlike the tiny cabin we were sleeping earlier. Though it wasn't as perfect as a comfortable bed, Jai made bamboo mats which he covered like a wall around the loft. It kept us warm all night.

"I am hungry already," Afridi complained.

The boy was always hungry.

"We will get something from the storage," I told him.

Well, it wasn't like a storage room. We threw all the luggage, food containers, and food supplies such as bananas, coconuts, vegetables which we collected from the forest, and kept them in the corner of the house right below the loft. We wanted to build a kitchen and storage shelves, but we hardly had time. Without proper tools and resources, even a simple task takes more time than we anticipated.

I got down from the loft and went outside the house, Afridi followed me soon after. At least we did manage to fix the front door. We didn't want animals coming in and taking the food supplies away. Food supplies were essential for our survival on that island. Though we didn't see many animals out there until then, we saw a couple of moose, wild cats, a deer, snakes, Junglehowls, and plenty of ducks. At night, we did hear the howling of wolves from the mountain and a few more noises that weren't identifiable. We assumed there could be few more creatures living in the deep forest closer to the mountain. I learned wild boars, bears, water buffalos, monkeys, foxes, and leopards live in similar tropical islands, but we didn't see any of them, not even their tracks then.

As expected, it was bright and shiny outside of the house, I assumed there would be winter soon after. Cold winds and ice mountains around the island gave me enough to doubt that. I even wondered if there would be snowfall. We were yet to discover our whereabouts on that island neither its name. I knew there were hundreds of uninhabited islands that exist in the world, particularly many in the North Atlantic and Oceanic oceans. Such islands exist in the Pacific ocean and Antarctica too. Junglehowls were quite common in the Asia Pacific and North Atlantic regions. The Plants and Trees which I saw there didn't give me enough clues about the region either, they could be found anywhere on Earth. I didn't see or witness a single living creature on that island which was unique to any particular region in the world, hence we didn't know where we were located.

I examined a spot next to our wooden house. It was 200 feet away from the water stream, there were small water buds close to the spot which probably had water leftovers from the stream during heavy rainfalls. I was sure the ground beneath that spot held more water. When I tested the soil in it, I realized the water could be even closer than that. I concluded that it was good land for the crops to grow.

"Hey, come here" I heard Afridi shouting from somewhere at the house front. I went to find him.

"Look, chickens laid eggs" He was grinning with excitement and showed me three eggs inside the bamboo cage next to the howls.

I put my hand inside and took the eggs out and examined it. It looked like healthy eggs. I went inside the house with the eggs, Afridi was following me like a puppy, he was murmuring some song in Arabic which I never heard of. The Kid gets excited all the time. I smiled to myself.

I didn't want the snakes from the forest to smell the eggs and take them away. The bamboo cage which we built for the birds was not protective enough, there were gaps, a snake could get inside easily. I took one of the small suitcases and kept the eggs in it.

"What are you doing?" Afridi asked me in confusion.

"I am protecting it from the eggs and other creatures which could easily get inside the cage. We need to build a proper shelter for the howls" I told him.

"Will the eggs become chicken on its own without the mother?" He asked me out of curiosity.

"There are artificial methods to do that, we don't need the mother," I told him.

We came out of the house again and I took Afridi to the farm spot.

"This place is closer to the groundwater, the soil is good for crops," I told him.

"So what's next?" Afridi asked me.

"We need to bring some water and pour on it to keep the soil wet, then we can plant the rice seeds on it," I told him.

"That's it?" Afridi asked me as if he couldn't believe me. He was a typical city boy who had no clue about farming.

"No, we need fertilizers, we need water every day," I told him.

"We can get the water from the stream. But where do we find fertilizers?" He asked me.

"We need rock phosphates or animal shits or limestones or seaweeds or decomposed plant manures" I was telling him, showing my agricultural expertise. He was simply shaking his head trying to process his city brain. He was confused, I knew it was hard for him to understand them.

So I said "Just follow me, let's go around the beach and forest to find some of those"

"He nodded his head vigorously just to make sure I wasn't going to feed his little brain with more scientific information.

"God, you are so dumb" I mocked him with a laugh.

"But you still like me" He laughed back

"I know, right," I told him

We saw Sakthi and Jai stepping out of the house. Lately, Sakthi had the habit of jogging on the beach every morning, I used to run along with him, but Afridi's laziness influenced me badly. I used to play volleyball and work out regularly back home, but I wasn't doing that on the island.

We informed them about the legs and also our farm plan. We lit the fire and made our morning soup. Unlike in the civilized world, we had no qualms about who does what. We shared our work equally and took responsibility whomsoever available at that moment. Cooking, woodwork, house building, fishing, dishwashing, pottery, fetching the water, wood and food supplies gathering, etc, we had plenty of work to do on a daily basis ever since we built that house. Then we got additional work such as bird poultry and farming. Life had been busy for us on that island.

There were moments we felt homesick, wanting to get back to the real world. And we looked for finding any transport or clues to get help. But those were momentary slips, we need to survive and for that, we need things to do on a daily basis. The initial days of desperation were gone.

Human minds are wonderful creations. It was all about getting used to it. Your survival instincts kick in all the time without you even noticing it. If you put a person in prison, he would struggle and look for ways to get out of it. But once he learned there is no way, he would get himself accustomed to prison life and probably wait for a miracle to get out.

"Jai needs more pots and vessels. If it starts to rain continuously, we need to store water and food" Sakthi interrupted my thoughts.

I liked Sakthi. He was a calm and composed guy with a practical mind, always planning ahead of things. His ideas hardly failed. Without him, we wouldn't have survived on that island. Who would have thought a muscle hunk could be both that way.

"I will do that once we are done with seeding the farm today" I replied to him.

"Do you think there will be rainfall and snowfall soon?" Jai asked me.

They depended on me for scientific, and geographical information.

"Might be, there are signs already," I told him.

If you are living in a remote location or even in a village, you had to live by season. There is no clock or calendar to follow. Early humans understood the seasonal changes and livelihood better than the Millennium generations. If we had to survive on that island even for a few more months, we need to understand and adapt to its seasons. Since the cyclone, we had a few more mini cyclones and storms, almost the whole day we had cold winds blowing on our face ever since we arrived, and then there was snow in liquid and gas form at nights which extended even after late mornings. I doubted if the temperature goes minus degrees at midnight. Surely, we were at the peak of winters and I was expecting more rainfall or even icy snow at its end.

It was like a Paris climate to me. I could handle that winter since I was accustomed to it, but not others especially Afridi who was born and brought up in the middle east under humid conditions. Human races and their characteristics evolved according to the place they lived or migrated. Food habits, clothes, practices, customs, human skins, hair colors, crops, and occupations varied according to that. At nights, I could see Afridi's body and mind unable to handle the cold and seeking additional warmth and comfort.

The whole day we worked to dig the ground at the farm spot to loosen the soil, fetch water from the stream, and fill in it. During late noon I began to throw rice seeds. Crop cultivation has been the significant discovery of humans on their evolution in the planet's history. Rather than depending on hunting and gathering, humans were able to cultivate crops and store them to overcome seasonal changes and reduce natural dangers.

I gave instructions to Sakthi and Jai to find animal wastages from the forest. I did survey the forest already and it was easier for me to provide a detailed description of the animal wastages where they could be found.

Afridi and I wandered around the beach, rocks, and then the forest to look for natural fertilizers or otherwise materials for organic farming."Let's collect the wastages of dead fishes," I told Afridi.

We gathered it in our plastic bag. Then we went to the rocks to look for limestones or rock phosphates.

"We need to look for white stones or white sediments on rocks," I told him.

Luckily, there were limestones everywhere on the rocks. I have already guessed it and seen it in my previous visits. I had a metal plate of the plane and used it to scrap the salt sediments from the rocks closer to the seawater.

We went even further close to the edges of the mountain sleep to collect seaweeds.

When all four of us returned to the hut, it was almost evening. Jai lit up the fire as usual and we sat around it to drink tea.

"Now that we have our fertilizers collections, what's next?" Jai started the conversation with that question.

"They aren't fertilizers yet, we need to dry under the sun and then burn it into ashes. We can then throw it on the crop field" I told him.

"How about the plant and medicinal seeds you have in your leather bag, can we try that out too?" Afridi asked me.

Well, that's for another day. First, we needed to find out if our crop seeds could grow on that island with our limited agricultural applications.

Experiments and failures are part of human history and evolution. It's all about trial and error.

One step at a time.
But then God had other plans.